Husband's agency work sporadic, is there any help?

Welshmum71

Hi everyone

My husband lost his full time job this summer and almost immediately found work with a temp agency (he has just qualified as a class 2 HGV driver but most companies won't touch him with a barge pole because of his lack of experience, so he has been finding van, 7.5 tone and occasional one-day HGV jobs through the agencies). I also work 16 hours per week. We have a mortgage (left over from the days when we both had good, full time jobs, sadly) and pay full council tax. We have two children for whom we receive Child tax credit and child benefit, and a very small amount of working tax credit (£25 per week).

Sadly, husband's work is becoming sporadic. He started a "long term" position with a well know delivery co recently, was told there would be work "at least" til Xmas. He's been doing well, hovering up the overtime, last week he did 56 hours! But this week he hasn't worked at all due to low volume of deliveries.

I am really worried as he hasn't earned anything this week.

He is hopeful that things will pick up in the run up to Xmas (which I am dreading as we can't afford to buy the children anything). But I am worried about the mortgage and Council tax and other bills, which I cannot cover on my part time wage (it's not possible to increase my hours with current employer, would need to look for another job). Is there any help we can claim for "slow" weeks like this? We have no intention of "living off the state" and are doing all we can to provide for ourselves but when you receive a text saying "sorry, no work today" at 7.10am (when you are on route to start work as normal at 7.30am, and this happens several days in a row, what are you supposed to do?!) it feels very hopeless and I am very worried.

Angelicdevil

Are you near a large supermarket that the home deliveries come out of? One in particular have had their online delivery service increase by 300% and are looking to recruit more delivery drivers to keep up with the demand.

Have you put your details into the Turn2Us calculator to check you're receiving all you're entitled to?

RAS

Can you average the last say 3 months income and put the details into www.turn2us.org.uk.

Check whether you can get the CTC based on current income? Ring them.

MiltyG565

If your husband is part of a recruitment agency and is contracted out to another company, they have to treat him the same as any employee. That said, they aren't really under any obligation to provide him with hours, unless he signed a contract between the agency and the company where all parties agreed to a certain number of hours per week. If no formal agreement with hours exists, they are perfectly within their rights to say "Sorry, there's no work for you today", sadly. I know it's frustrating, because I was an agency worker for a while. Maybe your husband should talk to the agency and see if they can do anything, even if they can guarantee 16 hours a week. The best thing is to try and find stable employment ASAP.

In regard to benefits - It's a hard one to answer. There are things like Income Support and Tax Credits, but they are based on your earnings as a whole, and not just for "slow weeks". You might have to do a bit of digging around to find something for your situation. I suggest you start with www[dot]gov[dot]uk, and phone your local benefits office to find out more.

Good luck

pmlindyloo

Forget Income Support - that is specifically for specific groups of people and from what you say you are not eligible.

Agency work is always open to problems when the work fluctuates. A more immediate problem (as I see it) is proving that you and your OH work 24 hours a week between you to meet the eligibility criteria for working tax credits.

On what basis did you get the working tax credits? Hopefully you have informed tax credits of the change of circumstances when your OH lost his full time job.

I am not trying to be unhelpful - just do not want to see you getting an overpayment of tax credits because you do not meet the hours criteria.

To be honest your OH needs to find a job that is contracted for at least 8 hours to make up the 24 hrs that you need for working tax credits. Could he find a part time job weekend/evenings to do this if he wants to carry on with his agency work. Or he needs to find a full time job with a contract guaranteeing him a certain number of hours.

When income fluctuates like this claiming benefits can become a nightmare as does budgeting.

Another option is for you to find more hours.

I know none of this is particularly easy but because you have a mortgage you really need some guaranteed income because you cannot claim for your housing costs through HB.